So Our first time mommy Mallard laid a nest of eggs in her floating duck house and incubated them. We have a 1/4 acre sized natural pond. We bought these 5 ducks (one female 4 males) as straight run chicks last year and raised them up. She was great sitting on them throughout the whole incubation, and yesterday I noticed a baby had hatched and was swimming around the duck house crying for her. She was 30 feet away eating with our 4 drakes ignoring the baby.. I was worried and thought maybe I should get the nest and collect any other babies if she was abandoning them, but decided to let her be and see if she would take to them. Later that evening I saw about 6 babies following her around, and they all swam into the duck house together so I let her be..
This afternoon I checked on them and my female duck was with the males and no babies in sight.. I found one dead one in the nest
one dead one floating in the water, and there was 1 live one swimming around crying for her. I could not find any other babies. There were 4 cold eggs in the nest yet, so I collected them and caught the survived duckling and put everything under a heat lamp. I feel horrible like I should have taken them all to safety last night..
My question is, do you think there is a chance of the eggs hatching? You can see babies stuffed in there. I don't know how long she hasn't been on the nest. The survived baby was cold, but after warming up seems very healthy.. I just worry about it being alone. I called several places and nobody has hatchlings I could buy to keep this guy company/warm. What do I do???
This afternoon I checked on them and my female duck was with the males and no babies in sight.. I found one dead one in the nest
one dead one floating in the water, and there was 1 live one swimming around crying for her. I could not find any other babies. There were 4 cold eggs in the nest yet, so I collected them and caught the survived duckling and put everything under a heat lamp. I feel horrible like I should have taken them all to safety last night.. My question is, do you think there is a chance of the eggs hatching? You can see babies stuffed in there. I don't know how long she hasn't been on the nest. The survived baby was cold, but after warming up seems very healthy.. I just worry about it being alone. I called several places and nobody has hatchlings I could buy to keep this guy company/warm. What do I do???
